How to read: interpreting responses to Reformation change through material interventions including marginalia in a 1537 printed primer

The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the physical condition and readers’ marks in a primer (W/S-10-3) printed in English and Latin in 1537 in relation to how it was used during the Henrician Reformation, and how this use gave it value as an artefact demonstrating cultural heritage to later readers. W/S-10-3 provided a platform for religious dispute, where readers demonstrate a public versus private conflict of faith through the means of marginalia and alterations via paper cutting to the scripture within its pages. The Henrician Reformation provided a complex backdrop to print culture development and the expanding market for vernacular devotional literature. Devotional reading was an opportunistic method of disseminating reform, because religious books were required for the structure of Renaissance life and the literate population structured their daily routines around the prayers within these books. They were then also equally as useful for the resistance to said reform, drawing a veil between state intervention into public devotion and steadfast traditionalism in private devotion. How the primer’s printer navigated censorship utilising their editorial abilities will also be discussed in this thesis. Finally, while the book is at its heart a devotional work, with its survival beyond the Henrician Reformation into the rest of the sixteenth century it also becomes an artefact with value in legacy for those descended from the conflict. The later uses of the primer and how this relates to its origins will be evaluated with the addition of archival research. The aim is to provide a valued addition to the current scholarship on marginalia practices and through this study, and in the photos and appendices, provide a resource for further study.